After well-publicized attacks on swimmers and surfers, and starring roles in thriller films, great white sharks have made the A-list of dreaded predators.

Yet conservation groups say the ocean giants should be protected, rather than feared, and deserve a place on endangered species lists.

Despite their prominent place in popular culture, white sharks are rare and elusive in the water, and some fear they are so scarce that their survival is at stake.

Last summer, the organizations Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity and Shark Stewards petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to grant white sharks protected status.

Numbers on the sharks have been hard to come by, but two recent studies suggest that only 339 adult and sub-adult white sharks live in the Northeastern Pacific.

California law bans fishing for white sharks, but fishery records show that each year California fishermen accidentally pull in between two and 25 white shark pups, and the petitions note that there may be more that aren’t reported.

Marine pollution, habitat loss and climate change could also endanger the sharks, they argue.

“White sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, of the Northeastern Pacific Ocean are in peril,” the state petition declared. “These sharks urgently need protection under the California Endangered Species Act.”

Scientists say that despite their fearsome reputation, the sharks remain a mystery, defying the kind of definitive answers that would help officials make that call.

The California Fish and Game Commission will consider on Feb. 6 whether to declare the sharks a candidate for protection, and has another year to decide whether to list them. A staff report released last week advised the commission to consider the request but cautioned that data on the sharks remain unclear.

The fisheries service is already looking at the listing request, and will decide in June whether to propose white sharks as a federally endangered species. It would then take public comment, and decide within a year whether to finalize that protection.

While the two agencies communicate about the process, they will decide separately on the endangered listings.

“There is a serious risk that this population is very low, and those numbers inherently provide a threat of extinction,” said Geoff Shester, California program director for Oceana. “By itself, that may or may not be a big concern, except that there is something we can do something about, which is (regulating) the by-catch in these fisheries.”

White sharks glide through global waters in three distinct regions including the Northeastern Pacific, which extends from Alaska to Mexico, between California and Hawaii. At lengths of up to 18 feet, with serrated, blade-like teeth, they’re the largest carnivorous sharks, making them a source of fear and fascination.

Thrillers such as “Jaws” and “Open Water” have preyed on that intrigue to capture audiences, while reports of real-life shark encounters keep beachgoers on their toes. The Los Angeles-based Shark Research Committee reported last week that there were eight authenticated shark attacks on the West Coast in 2012, all linked to great whites.

Nonetheless, scientists admit that what we don’t know about white sharks exceeds what we do.

Northeastern Pacific white sharks congregate around the Farrallones, near San Francisco, and Guadalupe Island, off Baja California. They’re also known to frequent an area that scientists call SOFA, for “shared offshore foraging area,” also dubbed the “White Shark Café.” It’s a cold expanse of open ocean, populated by sperm whales and squid.

Although tagged sharks transmit records of their whereabouts, “It’s hard to know what they’re doing out there,” said Heidi Dewar, a research fisheries biologist with the service.

Scientists assume the sharks use those places to breed and forage, but are still trying to piece together their life cycle. Young white sharks generally eat fish, and later switch to seals and sea lions.

But new studies suggest that some white sharks never eat marine mammals, consuming squid or swordfish instead.

The listing petitions describe white sharks as “apex predators,” top carnivores that prey on medium-sized animals, and that scientists say help regulate the food chain below them.

The massive sharks grow slowly and bear few young, leaving them vulnerable to population drops. That also makes it hard to track their reproductive life.

Although female white sharks bear facial wounds and gill scars that scientists believe mark mating events, almost no one has seen the massive fish mating, and little is known about their pregnancies and births.

“We don’t know exactly when they reach reproductive maturity,” said Dewar, who is coordinating the federal report on the listing petition. “We don’t know exactly when or where they pup, or what their gestation is.”

Researchers also don’t know how many white sharks there are, although recent studies aimed to count them by using dorsal fin photos to identify individual sharks, then applying a population formula to calculate their numbers.

While the state staff report acknowledged that the tally of 339 adult and sub-adult sharks would be “dangerously low,” it also said the estimate is “based on debatable assumptions.”

“The Northeastern Pacific population is protected by numerous sport and commercial fishing regulations in California, and there has been an increase in white shark interactions even as fishing effort has decreased,” the staff report noted.

That rise in interaction may mean that sharks are coming into harm’s way more often, a conclusion that would support the listing request. Or it could show that there are more sharks now.

A report by Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology at Cal State Long Beach, and director of the university’s shark lab, traces the number of white sharks accidentally caught in fishing nets.

His study showed a sharp spike in accidental catch of white sharks around 1985, followed by a deep dip in the number caught, then another uptick since 2006.

In the 1980s, he said, fishing operations killed many shark pups. But gill-net fishing in state water dropped by 82 percent since then, he said. And in 1994, white sharks received special protection under the California Fish and Game Code.

Lowe traces the increase in sharks caught in fishing nets to resurgence of white sea bass, noting that white sharks appear to take advantage of the same “hot spots” that fishermen visit.

“I think all the evidence shows that the (white shark) population has been recovering for the last 15 years,” Lowe said.

But uncertainty about the sharks’ health and numbers, should prompt regulators to err on the side of caution, Shester said.